A dark autumn night. A sighing wind. The hoarse roar of sullen waves dragging at the stones on the beach. A watcher on the tower of the church. The flash of a light far out at sea. A flare on the church tower, subsiding, flaming up again. Glimmering lights in cottage windows. The trampling of heavily booted feet across the beach. The glowing of lanterns. A gathering of dim figures under the arch of the cave, the sharp rattle of horsehoofs on the stony path which led down the cliff to the village. (Sir Evelyn's own experiences earlier in the day helped him to realise what that descent was like.) A gathering of led pack horses, whinnying and neighing, on the short grass where now the nets are spread. The continuous flashing of a ship's light near at hand. Answering flashes from the mouth of the cave. All the while the hollow booming of the sea. (Sir Evelyn had a good voice, resonant and thrilling like the tones of a 'cello and he was telling his story well.) The appearance of blacker shadows, huge, menacing, against the blackness of the night--the great sails of the lugger. The rattle of blocks and the whining of running ropes. Muttered orders. The slow in-gliding of the boat. The making fast of mooring ropes. This was part of one of the few chapters in Sir Evelyn's book which was already written. He had worked at it so long and revised it so often that he knew it off by heart. He thought it a fine piece of writing, and it certainly seemed good to his audience. Perhaps it is only because they despise their audiences that our statesmen talk stale jargon in Parliament and on platforms. When they sit down to write, hoping to be read by intelligent men and women, they are very often capable of producing good English. Chapter IV There were incidents in the story which might have been cavilled at by a cold-blooded critic. There were, as Sir Evelyn went on, inconsistencies. Men who had tramped across bare rolling stones were splashing knee-deep in water a little later, as if the tide had come in with startling rapidity. On so calm a night there was surely no need for the lugger to carry ballast outboard, though the description of the kegs slung along her weather gunwale helped to produce an atmosphere of very proper desperation. But what do such details matter? Sir Evelyn had achieved the spirit of the smugglers' night landing; worked up to quite unusual emotion he might have gone on to a fight with the preventive officers, but Mrs. Eames, uncontrollably excited, interrupted him at last. "I see it all," she cried, clapping her hands. "It's wonderful, Sir Evelyn, thrilling. Timothy, we must have a pageant--the Hailey Compton Pageant of Smuggling days. The first of a series of Hailey Compton Pageants of English History. Smugglers! They've never been done before."